Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Chestnut Soup

A creamy soup made from steamed chestnuts, white broth, heavy cream, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chestnut and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the steamed chestnuts in the white broth until tender.

  2. Mash the chestnuts finely and pass them through a sieve.

  3. Add the heavy cream and season with salt and pepper.

  4. If the soup is not thick enough, mix the flour and butter together and add to the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chestnut + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Steamed chestnuts
Provide the main body and flavor, becoming smooth when boiled and mashed.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to help thicken the soup.

The step that matters

Passing the chestnuts through a sieve. Chestnuts that are not mashed finely and sieved stay grainy, so the soup lacks a smooth texture. Thorough mashing breaks down the starch and fibres for a silky result.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutthe original
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chestnut SoupChestnut Soup52 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes